The
Unknown God
Paul thought he
had a great angle to argue from. He had seen an altar, among the city’s many altars
and shrines to Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, one dedicated to an Unknown
God. Hey, he said, I know who that God is. That God isn’t unknown at all. Let
me tell you about the Creator of the Universe, who is not like any of your
usual gods, who can’t live in an image made by human hands and doesn’t need
temples or sacrifices.
It strikes me that
this is an odd thing for a former Pharisee to say, that the One God doesn’t
live in a temple and doesn’t care about sacrifices. It shows how thoroughly
Paul has changed his outlook on the Divine, how he now understands that God is
everywhere and in everyone.
The God portrayed
in the Psalm looks a bit like the gods the Athenians were familiar with.
12
I will enter your house with burnt-offerings
and will pay you my vows, *
which I promised with my lips
and spoke with my mouth when I was in trouble.
13
I will offer you sacrifices of fat beasts
with the smoke of rams; *
I will give you oxen and goats.
14
Come and listen, all you who fear God, *
In return for
offerings, God answers the Psalmist’s prayer. It’s kind of transactional. That
was the relationship the Greeks and Romans had with their gods, one of
dealmaking and appeasement. Their gods were capricious and held grudges and
were, on the whole, more to be feared than loved. The Psalmist doesn’t seem to
know God all that intimately, compared to the knowledge we believe we have
after the revelations Jesus brought when he said if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen
the Father.
I think Paul might
have lost his audience when he got to the bit about God having “overlooked such
ignorance” as the worship of multiple gods. These were not people who would
take kindly to being called ignorant. They were highly educated seekers of
wisdom. And this singular, unknown God wants them to repent of their supposed
ignorance? Then there was the part about judgment. Ouch. As for “the man
appointed” rising from the dead, that wouldn’t impress people whose gods were
constantly interfering in human affairs. Paul said, “We are his offspring.” As
if that were a new idea. The Greek gods were always having offspring with
mortals, but those children were demigods and could do stuff regular humans
couldn’t, or else they were monsters like the Minotaur.
Some of the
Athenians laughed at him. Others condescendingly assured him they would enjoy
hearing more of these crazy ideas later. That’s when Paul walked out.
Amazingly, a few of those listening did become Paul’s followers and come to
believe in the risen Christ. A few of them came to see that Christ is a far
better Lord than Zeus or Ares, Jupiter or Mars.
In the reading
from John, Jesus tells his friends, “In a little while the world will no longer
see me, but you will see me…you will know that I am in my Father, and
you in me, and I in you. And “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world
cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.” Paul’s Athenians sort
of represent the world here. They—people in general—tend to be blind to what
differs from their fixed ideas.
The author of 1
Peter makes a reference to our baptism, which he calls “an appeal to God for a
good conscience.” When we’re baptized in this tradition, we promise to seek and
serve Christ in ALL persons and to respect the dignity of EVERY human being.
That is the life we emerge into from the water. That is the good conscience.
I was baptized by
immersion (in a swimming pool, as it happens), so I have a clear memory of coming
up out of the water and being told that dunking made me someone new, although by
their definition I was already “born again” from having asked Jesus into my
heart at age 4.
I don’t recall
that the preacher used any of the words in our baptismal covenant, but I had an
instinct about what kind of person I was supposed to become, one who lived by
what was then my favorite hymn, “We Are One In the Spirit.” It says we will “guard
each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.”
In Florida in
1969, I saw this as applying especially to my neighbors of color and did my
best to treat the Black students at my school with the respect the wider
society still wasn’t granting them. I’m not sure it was very effective. They
regarded me with suspicion and confusion because I was a white Yankee and
talked funny. I was also probably autistic, but no one knew it then. Or maybe
the real problem is that I saw myself as trying to do the Black kids a favor.
Maybe they saw through my polite condescension.
That’s the real
knowledge Jesus is imparting, that we find him in people. As my old college friend Dr. Peter Carlson put
it, “When I keep the commandments [to love god and neighbor], I see G-d. I see
G-d in the people on the edges—the edgy folx—and when I see G-d in people, I am
with them. And when I am with them, I am in Jesus, who taught us to see them.”
Paul was telling
the Athenians where not to look for the Divine—not in golden shrines and
statuary, at any rate. What he doesn’t quite manage to say and what Jesus does
say, is that we can know the Unknown God by knowing Jesus. Do we really know
Jesus, though? Don’t most of us mainly know ABOUT Jesus? And so much of what we
think we know may be wrong. Then there’s the Holy Spirit—"as near as our
next breath and yet untouchable.” We think we know the Trinity. Well, we think
we know about the Trinity, especially those of us who have managed to read
through the Creed of Athanasius. The best we can do to really know the Unknown
God is to look at Jesus and look at each other.
God is finally
unknowable because everyone is finally unknowable, but we can come closer to
knowing God by getting to know other people, especially those on the fringes
whom he repeatedly pulls for. The immigrants. The addicted. The queer. It’s
easy to see our ministry to these groups merely as us doing something for them.
Like we’re somehow above them. Like the way the Athenian philosophers thought
they were doing Paul a favor by letting him talk nonsense to them. But the
unknown triune God is not just within us, They’re within those we reach out to.
Until we can see Christ the Lord in all persons, we’re only halfway
there, no matter how much compassion we offer. That’s how we respect the
dignity of every human being. By perceiving that they are all noble and lordly and
are reflections of the Divine, just as they were each crafted by our Unknown
God, in whom we ALL live and move and have our being.
https://www.amazon.com/Queer-Lectionary-proper-Readings-Margins/dp/1640657959
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